What a crazy game - it has it all. Six goals, a deluded pitch invasion, a missed penalty with the last kick of the match and a bizarre cabbage moment!The portents are ominous. A drizzly evening and a subdued atmosphere, despite a fairly respectable crowd for a mid-week fixture. Preston are bottom of the table and this should be a routine victory for the Villa. However, our frustrating win-less run has dampened down early season enthusiasm.
The team's announced and reserve goalkeeper Mark Bunn replaces Orjan Nyland, our lack-lustre pre-season signing. Given Steve Bruce's increasingly bizarre tactic of playing as many squad members as possible out of position we should at least be relieved Bunn is not to be paired up-front with Tammy Abraham.
The first half shows much promise. Jonathan Kodjia scores, triggering a pitch invasion by a young man who all but loses his low-hanging trousers in the process. A second is added by Abraham who cuts in from the left-hand side of the field and dances through a faint-hearted defence to score. All seems well and at half-time the talk is of how many we'll put past the beleaguered Preston.
And then melt-down. Preston come out attacking and their reward is a penalty, earning an unwarranted red-card for our captain James Chester. Reduced to ten men Bruce chooses to substitute Abraham for an extra defender in the form of James Bree. It proves subsequently to be a very unfortunate decision.
Preston pile on the pressure and Villa's increasingly porous defence concedes two further goals. Relief comes in the form of a late scrambled equaliser by Yannick Bolasie. And who would believe it, a chance to take all three points when Birkir Bjarnason is felled by a clumsy challenge in the Preston penalty area.
Once more, Villa shoot themselves in the foot. With both Abraham and Kodjia off the field up steps the obvious candidate to take the penalty. Glenn Whelan, a defensive mid-fielder with but one goal to his credit in the last seven years. Unsurprisingly, his feeble shot is saved by the Preston keeper and the final whistle blows.
But what of the cabbage? Bizarrely it's used by a Villa supporter as an instrument of protest, hurled at Steve Bruce's feet just before kick-off. It's a sad end to the Bruce's time at the helm of Villa, a stint that saw us avoid the humiliation of a second successive relegation and almost make it back to the Premiership at our second attempt.
It does, however, prompt one of the better tweets of the night, paying homage to Bruce's standard poker-faced press interviews ...
'I'm not sure if the cabbage hit me. It was there or thereabouts. But it did have the making of a good throw.'
He's sacked the next day and now the search is on for yet another new manager.
